The Secretary of Labor has gone on record in opposition to S. 31, the "Emergency Employment Act of 1971" which provides for public service employment the measure chiefly responsible for the President's veto of the 1970 Comprehensive Manpower Act. He has conceded that job creation in the public sector might be appropriate under manpower revenue sharing. And he has approved 200,000 public service jobs as part of the welfare reform. Without more radical measures, this will not meet the problem posed by the 2.6 million registrants. If the 412,000 training slots proposed are authorized and the percentage of those trained who get jobs is the same as under the WIN program, 20% or roughly 82,400 of the registrants will, after training, obtain jobs from the existing job supply. This means that training and public service employment together could lead to employment for approximately 282,400 of the registrants. The remaining registrants -- almost 90% -- will either go without employment, continue "underemployed" with no change in status, or be placed in the marginal jobs previously considered unfillable, which have been listed by the Service for over a month, and which in many cases, will not pay enough to take them off welfare.11/ The latter course of action appears to conflict with the "employability development" section of the Act. A welfare recipient could validly refuse to accept a job unless he had received the services defined in that section. In any event, unless an adequate investment is made in both job training and new jobs, most of the registrants will not be given work or will remain underemployed.12/ At the time of this writing, there was substantial confusion over the issue of jobs -- where they would come from, how many people would need them, etc. One Manpower Administration official stated: "Where have the jobs come from in the past. They have come from the public sector and the private sector, and there's no other place they can come from. "13/ Without jobs, the H.R. 1 training programs will be just another form of income maintenance. The work requirement is conceptually sound; many of the individuals now trapped on welfare are anxious to assume a productive role in the society. However, without substantial job creation measures, it will not work. Further, it is unrealistic to expect the achievement of that goal via the ES as it is presently constituted. The performance of the ES under WIN makes it clear that enlarging its role under FAP and the Food Stamp program where it would be dealing with - similar clients would be a great disservice to those who expect substantial economies by moving large numbers of people off the welfare rolls into productive jobs. More importantly, it could have tragic consequences for the welfare recipients themselves. ES administration of the work requirement cannot lead to meaningful employment or lasting independence from welfare. It is more likely to mean interrupted, poorly delivered services with a job previously characterized as "unfillable" at the end of the road. This could transform the work requirement provision into an uneconomical measure, creating a cheap pool of forced labor, but not rehabilitating the economically deprived. 1/ The program does not provide funding for creating new jobs. It relies on the ES to solicit job listings, primarily from the private sector. Some observers of the program claim that appropriate jobs simply haven't been available, but the Secretary of Labor continues to claim that jobs are there. See p. 55 supra. 2/ 3/ Senator Herman Talmadge stated during the FAP hearings that of the $22 million made available for on-the-job training, only $800,000 had been used. (FAP Hearings, Sen. Finance Comm., May 1, 1970, p. 367.) 4/ In some states, only individuals who had work experience were referred to the WIN program. 5/ On April 26, 1971, a federal district court struck down the state work requirement, in a decision that questions the acceptability of any state compulsory-work rule with less comprehensive services and safeguards than those provided by the WIN statute. Plaintiffs were welfare mothers who lost all support for themselves and their children when they refused to accept live-in housekeeper jobs paying $20 per week. Woolfolk v. Brown, et. al. C.A. 225-70-c, ED Va. 1971. (This case was brought with the support of the Employment Project, at the Columbia Center for Social Welfare Policy and Law.) 6/ On April 16, 1971 the Food and Nutrition Service of the Department of Agriculture published a notice of proposed rulemaking (36 Fed. Reg. 7240-54, to become 7CFR88 270-274 when approved) setting forth the administrative regulations for the amended Food Stamp program. §271. 3 (d) deals, in part, with the mechanics of the work requirement. ?/ Exempted from the registration requirement are: 71) those unable to engage in work by reason of illness, incapacity or advanced age; (2) a relative caring for a child under 6 (under 3 after July 1974); (3) the mother of a child where an adult male is in the home and has registered; (4) a child under 16 or a student under 21; or (5) someone who must be at home to care for an ill or incapacitated member of the family. 8/ The Committee Report states that "good cause" is to be found "only in clear-cut situations where the individual's reasons are sound and compelling". It gives as examples the absence of child care or lack of transportation to the job. 9/ Some of these individuals probably are (or have been) enrolled in existing training programs such as CEP, WIN or MDTA, but the DOL has no hard figures to document this. Even under the best of circumstances, it is clear that only a small number of the registrants will receive training and job upgrading. 10/ For example, 78.3% of North Carolina's 1969 placements were agricultural; in California, the figure was 78% and in Ohio, it was 31.9%. 11/ Both the President and the architects of H.R. 1 have endorsed the latter course of action, immediate placement of registrants in existing jobs, regardless of the nature of those jobs. 12/ DOL officials state that the "work requirement" is premised on a reduction of the present 6% unemployment rate to around 4%, with a resultant reduction in the number of people eligible for H.R. 1 manpower programs. They also state that if the manpower component of H.R. 1 is fully financed and the nation's manpower effort is doubled, the ES will not be able to handle such a sudden expansion. 13/ Earl Klein, Office of Financial and Management Systems. |